The Meta

Microsoft – What is Acceptance Testing?

This guide is about accepting software. Accepting software involves acceptance testing, but it is much more than that. This guide uses the following terms very specifically:

Acceptance refers to the act of assessing whether a piece of software or a system meets the customers’ expectations. It includes both the acceptance decision and any acceptance testing activities required to collect the data on which the acceptance decision is based. The pre-decision testing activities can be considered “readiness” testing; this concept is described more later in this guide. Both the acceptance testing and the acceptance decision can be relegated to a separate acceptance phase of the project or they can be done throughout the project, which is known as Incremental Acceptance Testing.